Philosopher’s Annual for 2025

The articles that made it into the latest edition of Philosophers Annual have been announced. The list aims to “select the ten best articles published in philosophy each year—an attempt as simple to state as it is admittedly impossible to fulfill.” This volume—the 45th—covers the literature from 2024. The selections are: Evan Behrle (Harvard), “Desert and Economic Interdependence” from the Journal of Philosophy. Outside of philosophy, the idea that workers deserve to be paid according to their productive contributions is very popular. But political philosophers have given it relatively little attention. In this paper, I argue against the attempt to use this idea about desert and contribution to vindicate significant income inequality. I claim that reward according to contribution fails on its own terms when the following condition holds: the size of each worker’s contribution depends on what other workers only together do. When workers only together make another more productive, that…